Laura Bell Bundy: More Two-Step, Less Twerk

Ah, the two-step. The classy kind of dancing that country fans can embrace and appreciate and try to learn. So how fitting is it that Laura Bell Bundy, one of CMT’s Next Women of Country, has the very song devoted to teaching fans to get their groove on? And I literally mean teaching: side to side, two steps, work it out, grind grind grind switch, slide slide, two-step and so on. That’s what she sings in her new song “Two Step.”

Bundy started her own dance training in Kentucky when she was 2, but she told me that learning dances hasn’t always been easy for her even though her dad (nicknamed Disco Don) has an innate ability to dance.

“My dad was the king of dance floor,” she said. “He has this great sense of natural rhythm. For me, it’s less about being a trained dancer than just when music is playing, I am moving. … Even when I was 18, I was jonesing for a fake ID so that I could go dance. It was always about going out and shaking my junk.”

What Bundy says she’s doing now is a country dance movement.

“I want to make music that people who love country music can dance to and that is groove focused,” she said. “We all know the traditional way of doing a two-step. It’s a partner dance. With this kind, you don’t need no man. This is what I do. I make country music people can dance to. And I’m making music for my inner 16-year-old.”

But there is a part in the song’s music video where Bundy appears to be doing a bit of twerking.

“What I’m doing is a kind of twerk, I guess, but I’m not doing it properly because I can’t figure it out,” she said. “I can’t get my butt to move like that.”

She even said that Miley Cyrus’ controversial VMA performance wasn’t true twerking, either.

“The way that Miley Cyrus twerks, that’s not really twerking. That’s just stripper moves, not twerking. If her goal was to disassociated with Disney and her image of being a youthful icon, she accomplished that.

“I also want to thank her for giving us something to talk about. Pop music right now can be raunchy as heck. It’s shock value in a form of art. We may not have been so shocked if it wasn’t Miley Cyrus doing it.”